Three UK begins its 4G LTE roll out, slowly and quietly

The day many UK based iPhone owners is finally upon us, kind of. Three has begun the rollout of its fledgling 4G LTE network by way of a soft launch right now limited to just a few thousand customers in London. It will expand, but as Three confirmed to Android Central, there's a plan and a reason:

The reason for this, Three tell us, is to ensure the smoothest possible rollout for its 4G network, though a side-effect of this staged rollout has been a stream of tweets from disgruntled Three subscribers. The carrier previous committed to a launch in London, Manchester and Birmingham in December, but made no mention of its plans to restrict this to a small number of customers at the get-go.

The launch rollout was promised for London, Birmingham and Manchester during December, so if you're not seeing it right now there's no need to freak out too much. December has plenty of days left for things to progress. Access so far seems to have been random, so we've no indication of what data speeds folks may be seeing.

Three has promised an official release soon to clarify the situation, so we'll know more soon. In the meantime if you're one of the lucky few to have jumped on to the new network, let us know what speeds you're getting in the comments below.